The Story I Will Never Write

It being excruciatingly close to my birthday, I got to thinking recently.
There is a story in my life that I will never write. I have had all sorts of bizarre experiences, but the most bizarre will never issue from this keyboard, any other keyboard, or any of the myriad forms of writing that exist. And the story that I will not be able to tell is of the one where I give birth.
I can tell the one story about the time where I might have been pregnant. I have a blind terror of pregnancy, because it is something I have never experienced and so I fear it. It is a life changing experience and I don't take change well. The scariest part is that once I have passed through that experience event horizon, I think, Oh, that was nothing! I can do that a thousand more times! And the last thing I or anyone else on earth needs is a thousand of my babies. But that's what happens. Once I have an experience under my belt, I turn into a ditto machine and I do it over and over.
To prevent this, I have never been pregnant. I have never carried a child to term. And I have never given birth. You can say all you want about what a wonderful experience this is, I can read all about it, I can watch Jennifer Anniston on "Friends" fake it to much canned laughter, but it has not happened nor will it ever happen to me.
Therefore, there will be no amusing, traumatic, poignant (a word that a Tidewater English teacher I had pronounced "pwahg-nent"*), hilarious, or otherwise interesting story about me breaking water, having contractions, having false contractions, panicking my husband, exciting my mother, alarming the neighbors, getting stopped by state troopers, having flat tires, giving birth in the back seat of a taxi, demanding painkillers in an Exorcist voice, screaming invectives at my bewildered husband when he tries to coach me in the LaMaze breathing while inflicting cold irony on my obstetrician, sharing wisecracks with the nursing staff, loping like an orangutan to a bathroom dragging my IV on a wheeled stand, finding my emotional balance when confronted by a terminal cancer patient, threatening friends who arrive with videocameras, suddenly going back into labor to give birth to an unexpected twin-triplet-quadruplet-etc., being forgiven for the stream of invectives by a frazzled but proud father, blogging the whole thing on MySpace, and passing out from happy exhaustion after a job well done or crying inconsolably over sixteen hours of pain in vain. I will have no funny stories about the nursing bra, incompetent baby-changing (I hope - I could still get stuck with that for someone else's kid, I suppose), and a thatch of outrageously colored hair that is quickly superceded by four years of bald baby girl with a pink bow taped to her head (as was done for me).
No, the only stories I will be able to relate (or even relate to) are about me. I was born, but I don't remember it. I wasn't born blogging, nor were my parents. My sister is no longer around to describe the series of failed pregnancies that preceded me nor to pointedly not tell about how she wandered off when she was supposed to be in a neighbor's care and stepped into a yellow jackets' nest and wound up in the hospital at the same time as our mother.
And then there's that one time (referenced above) that I thought I might be pregnant because I had skipped a period and was nauseus each evening. Yes, I know it's supposed to be morning sickness, but I have a tendency to get things backwards and at the time I was going through a phase where I ate dinner things for breakfast and finished off the day with a bowl of cereal. It seemed logical that I might have evening sickness in that case instead. I don't recall if I'd been having sex at a time prior that would have put me in the early stages of pregnancy - probably not. My friend Cindy was also skipping, but she felt she at least had an excuse. We considered moving to Charleston and she could have the baby there and we would each tell people it was the other person's baby, thereby covering the embarrasment. In the end, our periods returned naturally and the need to leave town (it was the 1970s and there was still a stigma to unwed motherhood. In fact, according to my state supplied health insurance, pregnancy was not covered if I was not married) evaporated. Yes, years later when I was married I had a skipped period, but by then it could just as easily have been menopause as a pregnancy.
So, I've never been pregnant. And the only reason I'd ever want to be is because there's this smug superiority to deal with from the women who have been through it, the same smug superiority that I wield when I have had an experience someone else has not. It's as if I am not a real woman if I haven't been through this. No one ever actually says this out loud, but their actions and their looks at the rest of us hiss it in a nasty, nasty whisper. What is it, some sort of exclusive club? Faugh! In fact, they are probably just jealous that we can still stay out late, need no babysitters, buy toys for ourselves, never deal with teenagers, not have to pay for some ingrate's college, don't have some out-of-work adult child move back in just when we thought we were free and clear, and never, never, never have to set a good example.
So that is the story that will never be told. You will never have to read my amusing tales of motherhood. I will never show you photos of children or grandchildren or bore you with details of their unexceptional lives.
Remember, you never read it here.

*Okay, this could be "poin-yant," or "pwahn-yant" or the fully frenchified "pwahn-yong," but it just can't be "pwahGG-nent" and I was aware of this even as early as high school.

How Does Nora Ephron Get Published?

I picked up this cd of Nora Ephron's book - something with a title about not being happy about her neck. Anyway, I'm listening to this and my first thought is how ever did she get this published? I am 53 (or will be soon), I've got surgery in the neck area coming up, and I can in no way relate to this problem with the neck. What's with the turtlenecks and scarves? Then she goes into her life in New York City. I should be able to relate to that. But she talks about an apt. she paid a $24,000 (yes, that's right) key fee for. She was paying more a month in the 1980s than I earn a month now. Perhaps this is amusing to other people who had eight room apartments in New York.
The next thing I wonder is why on godsgreenearth they allowed this woman to read her own material? Her speaking voice is driving me crazy - and that's saying something after I endured a computer-generated voice reading Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, a book larded over with t' broad Yorkshire dialect and all. The eerie feeling you were being read a children's book by Stephen Hawking aside, I was sucked right into the story and mostly forgot it was a machine.
This is Ephron's real speaking voice? I just get the impression that she has tried to slow it down, which only makes the s's hissier and her final t's like tiny hammers on metal. I'm sure when she talks normally she picks up the pace ... and in fact, has some pace. This audio book reminds me of a truism I used to have about poets, that they should never be allowed to read their own material. I have since revised this opinion, as there are some poets who read beautifully. There are some authors who make great speakers and do a boffo job of reading their material, even when you think they wouldn't (Kaye Gibbons comes to mind).
Fran Lebowitz is just plain funny. I read Metropolitan Life when I first moved to New York and laughed my arse off. Dodging dog poo is indeed an Olympic Event. I don't know if I'd let her read it to me, though. I'd audition her first. Then I might recommend a nice out-of-work actor to read her stuff and she can just lick her wounds all the way to the bank.
I'm not saying I could read Ephron's material any better. I bet she's drop dead hilarious in person. But talking and telling stories is not reading written material. Ask anyone who's ever corresponded by audio tape.
Maybe I just can't relate to her lifestyle. Sorry, Nora, I'm just not getting it.

Snore?

Mij and Marf "Wedding" Photo

I don't know where this memory came from, but it popped up recently. While living in New York with Fred, we would occasionally take in people who were trying to break into the city. We were a sort of launching pad, if a very small one. We lived in a studio apartment and Fred and I were very much in each other's pockets. So, taking in a third party was a stretch. We tried to confine it to people we knew and liked from back South.
This brings in someone I will, to protect his anonymity, call Mij. Our Dear Friend Mij Mubnergard came to stay with us. Now, Fred and I (and I can admit this now that my mother is dead) shared a sofabed. Mij had to sleep on the floor, when he arrived, on the sofabed cushions. We wanted to give him time to get on his feet, leave the nest, fly on his own - yadda-yaddah. As it happened, he would be getting a little extra time because I was scheduled to go to Cambridge to see Temple at Harvard Law School. I would be gone a week or more. Undoubtedly, I would be sharing Temple's bed as well (sorry, Mom). Before returning, though, I gave Fred a call to see how things were going.
"How's Mij?" I asked.
"Still here," he moaned.
"Oh," and a thought occurred to me. "Should I find another place to stay?"
"No, no," Fred insisted, "come home!"
When I arrived I found that Mij had made himself at home, moving to the sofabed. Fred had done his best to make things uncomfortable for him. He insisted that Mij stand out in the hallway to smoke. At night, though, we were all in the same bed, Mij then Fred, then me. It was ... cramped.
Most of the time we weren't all in the apartment together. Mij and I would be alone waiting for Fred to finish a show for the night. Don't get me wrong, we loved Mij. We enjoyed each other's company, it was just too small a space for three people.
One day Fred made a strangled noise from the kitchen area. He was standing at the clothes closet (in the kitchen) and holding a white shirt at arm's length.
"Look at this!" he squawked and I dutifully moved the six feet required to get from the couch to the kitchen.
It was one of Fred's shirts. The collar of the shirt was almost black with dirt. "He must have worn this for a week! And then hung it back up instead of putting it in the laundry pile!" Fred was very particular about his clothes and his appearance. Mij had not asked to borrow a shirt. He'd worn it until dirt was ground into it.
"He has to go," said Fred.
"Don't do it when I'm here!" I pleaded. I hate confrontations.
Later that week Fred called me at work. "What are you doing this evening?" I didn't have any plans and I said so. "That's fine if you want to go out with your friends," he said, pointedly.
I sucked in my breath. "This is it, isn't it? You're going to tell him to go."
"I thought Mij and I would go out for dinner," he said.
"He's there, isn't he?"
"That's fine. Some other time then." He was going to let Mij have it, firmly, and then he was going to go off to work, leaving me to deal with the shrapnel. I stayed away as long as I could.
When I got home, Mij was standing in the hallway, smoking. He asked me about my day. And I returned the favor, as if I didn't know what had gone on.
"Fred told me I had to go," he said, putting out his cigarette and following me inside. "But, you know, it's just as well. I just can't stand the snoring anymore."
"Snoring?" I began, worrying that I might have been disturbing his sleep.
"Fred's snoring. It's just too much. I can't take it."
"Snoring?" I reiterated, "but Fred d-" and I caught myself. I had never heard Fred snore, and he was usually asleep first. He was intentionally turning to face Mij each night and snoring very loudly. Such genius!
After that, Fred and I agreed on some rules for houseguests, who, like fish, take up way too much room after three days. We had three basic rules for the House:
1. We Share Everything (towels, tableware, food, bevvies, space).
2. Anyone who spends the night has to meet the approval of both residents because
3. See rule number 1.
A couple of years later, I was the one who got the Dinner. Fred was crashing and burning and didn't want me there when it happened. We went out for dinner and after we ordered he said that he had to tell me something. He told me I had to move out and once he'd told me, he felt better and tucked in when the food arrived. My salad turned to ashes in my mouth. Oh, well. What goes around, comes around.
I moved in with two other people and decided it was time to leave New York. One of my new roommates, let's call him Nad, was a backstabbing little trick who lied about the cost of the rent so he could charge us girls more and get a free ride. When I was packing to leave, he switched sweaters on me (we had bought identical sweaters) because he had torn the armpits out of his. Nad was the nightmare roommate I had not experienced until then. He did have his good points, though, I must admit. He had good taste in boyfriends and we enjoyed some Metropolitan Opera perks thanks to him. This just goes to show that it's not always who you know that counts, but with whom who-you-know is sleeping.

The Sedaris's Are Not Dysfunctional

I was in LibraryThing this morning reading posts on librarians who librarything and blog when I followed some links to a review of a book by one of my favorite authors. The reviewer referred to the Sedaris family as dysfunctional and that while the reviewer laughed at the stories, they also made the reviewer sad. I started to submit a comment, but it wasn't working and the site didn't accept it. Fortunately for you, hahaha!, I saved the comment and I add it here:

You know, I get a completely different reaction to Sedaris's family, but then I have read just about all his books (there might be one I missed). His family was deeply involved in each other and his parents apparently supported him in all his crazy incarnations (until it became obvious that he was gay and his father threw him out, but apparently his father has gotten past that). If anything, they were too much in each other's lives.
Despite all the cigarettes and alcohol (which look normal by 1960s standards) of the parents and the apparent drug use of the children, they are functioning pretty well. The Sedaris kids were "encouraged" to do volunteer work in the summers and to take music lessons (which they were allowed to discontinue when they showed a lack of interest or aptitude). Despite their upper middle class status, they did not consider "menial" jobs beneath them. They rally around each other when things go wrong.
My reaction is often one of delighted relief, mostly that his family, while entertaining, was not mine. Yet at the same time, I am envious of their spirit and lack of reserve. My family is northern euro and despite the eerie parallels (IBM, drinking-which goes with the IBM, moving south, an overly-thrift-conscious dad, live-in granny of foreign birth, my move to Manhattan to pursue acting of all things), they come off as, well, boring. This leads me to the tentative conclusion that Sedaris may be, how you say, exaggerating the seemingly dysfunctional bits just a wee bit. And I seem to note that they come off as being very, very ... happy.

That was all I had intended to put in there, as it was just a comment on the review, which shouldn't be longer than the review itself, right? And I left out the bit about how much I just plain love David Sedaris. I stood in line for over an hour (it might have been two, I'll have to ask my husband) for his autograph on his cd, "Live at Carnegie Hall," but that is nothing compared to the amount of time he sat there autographing. Yes, he's making money (ca-ching! ca-ching!), but he stayed until the absolutely last person got their autograph. He spoke with people as if he really liked them (perhaps he's just hunting for new material). He presented new material at his reading, rather than capitalizing on his old stuff. And then there are those eerie parallels.

I was an IBM child. Even after my dad left IBM, we were still tied up in the IBM satellite system of friends and vendors. My parents were drinkers. They had been smokers, but gave it up fairly early. All of my dad's friends were grateful because Dad was a terrible mooch. In the end I think they only gave it up because it was an expense. My mother did some occasional smoking and tells a story about how after one of her Kaffeklatsches we, and I was only three or four, shared out a Turkish cigarette whose colored paper matched the theme colors for the party. As a family we would eat the wine gelatin that was leftover from such frolics, right down to the family beagle. Tommy (named after the IBM president, the dog's full name was Thomas J. Watson Shopmyer Jr. the Second in a comic parody of the habit of naming a child after said prez in order to get the $50 bonus) would whimper and whimper until he got the gelatin, which he ate gingerly and spit out the grapes.
My parents and their friends used to get drunk and then pull out the IBM songbook for a good old, drunken sing-along. Now, my sister claimed that our parents' parties were just short of orgies. And she actually went so far to say to our mother when she was married and had children, "Mother, we have nice parties." [Mom's retort to that was that she had "fun parties."] Speaking as someone who sat in my sister's laundry room and translated the subtitles on the x-rated movies for one of her and her husband's legally blind friends, Blind Fred (he could not see well enough to follow the video and read the subtitles), I can't recall my parents' parties being quite as "nice" as that. Yeah, the adults jumped up and kissed each other at midnight on New Year's Eve, but I don't recall any couples under the table or in a spare bedroom. Of course, I was nine years younger than my sister.
I'm beginning to suspect that my sister could have written some Sedaris-type stories about our family that I just can't. I am loath to exaggerate. I scruple to misrepresent. It's one thing to write wild tales of fiction, but I can't do it about me or my family. Consequently, these Tales of the Blonde Shikseh wind up being almost funny. My experiences are not quite adventures. For this, I apologise, but at least you know that, barring my infamous poor memory, everything that I have written here is factual.
The cartoons, though, might have a teeny bit of exaggeration.

Doin' the Dishes

I have learned that older people don't see well. Or hear. This is doing the dishes without my sister, while I was living as an adult (in my 40s) with my parents between jobs.

Doin' the Dishes: The Beginning

These things always start somewhere. My mother recounted to me how her mother and her mother-in-law behaved when they were both visiting at the same time and offered to do the dishes. No, really. Would I lie to you?

Son of Doin' the Dishes (Part the Third)

All true; all factual. Relationships with our siblings just don't get any worse than this ... without the actual shedding of blood. Inside some of us, the younger siblings, there is a well of anger and frustration just waiting to get out. Unfortunately, some of us don't get to release that and we wind up punching refrigerators because our mothers informed us that our older siblings, as large as they might be, have little feelings that are easily hurt. We have to "make nice." This will serve us well (?) in our future where we will run into this same type of relationship again and again and again. To be fair, it is because I look for these people. It's a relationship I am comfortable in. Phew! How sick is that!?

Doin' the Dishes Part 2

I can't tell you how many times this was enacted. The only over-the-top part is where my sister grabs me by the throat. She never did that. Otherwise ...

Doin' the Dishes, Part the First

This hearkens back to the days when our parents would leave us alone and my sister (who was nine years older) and I would have this wrangle over who would do the dishes. There's a double issue here: dishes and my relationship with an older sister who adored me ... but.

Richard Hertz, MD

Once upon a time, there were two people who lived together in a very, very, very small apartment. They both liked movies, but one of them liked movies more than the other. One of them would sit through any movie at all no matter how bad it was. The other would walk out of a movie if it failed in any way to live up to expectations. Oddly enough, the one who really loved movies was the walker, and his name was Fred. The other one, who only sort of liked movies but was willing to sit through nearly any swill rather than embarrass herself by walking out was called, let's say, me. Anyway, I knew of Fred's proclivities and he was aware of my inertia and the spooky brew of our tendencies was about to come to a boil.
Richard Gere had been in another movie that was playing not too far from where we were living on the Upper East. I had never actually seen a Richard Gere movie (although I'd seen clips from "American Gigolo" and hadn't really liked what I'd seen) and it was a rip-off of a French film (and I had to look it up on imdb.com to recall the name, otherwise I'd be making a total arse of myself with possible titles such as: Blowing, This Blows, Barking, etc.) and renamed "Breathless."
Not long into this spleen-jerker, I started wondering how Fred felt about the film and if he was about to walk out. I had never walked out of a film, but I was now ready for a new experience. I didn't say anything and we sat through the whole, long, ghastly turd. Afterwards I mentioned to Fred that I would have walked out of that one if he wanted to and he said that he was staying put because he knew I didn't like to walk out. Then we both started laughing and went in search of a watering hole in which to sluice away the bad taste in our mouths.
We had passed a watering hole called Uncle Charlie's North. This was patently a gay bar, as its brother in the Village was. But we also patronized a gay bar up in our neighborhood called Brandy's, and didn't think anything of it.
The clincher on this deal was that Uncle Charlie was having a happy hour for the next 40 minutes or so, making it a wise financial choice. The counter bar was crowded, so we ambled off to a quiet corner to sip our beers and trash the waste of celluloid we'd just suffered through. The first round went fairly quickly, having also demolished a container of over-salted, over-priced popcorn at said "flick." After the second round, though, Fred claimed he was tired of braving the group at the bar and being ogled (which I never knew he ever had a problem with), and he told me to make the next trip.
Because we'd been sitting by ourselves and absorbed in our mutual grievances, I hadn't really looked around the bar, but standing in a short line at the counter for the last happy hour call, I realized that I was next to the only other woman in the place and all the monitors were showing male strippers (a waste of time, as far as I'm concerned). This may have shown on my face, for a denizen of the barstools leaned back and said, "Don't worry, Honey, we don't bite!" To which I retorted rather quickly, "Oooooo, I wish you would!"
This seemed to entertain my new friend, which he intended to be. He invited me to bring my escort to the bar (where, happy hour closing out, there was now room). Fred reluctantly joined us.
Perhaps I should describe Fred a bit, explain what he was doing in New York and our relationship. When we met in South Carolina, Fred was a hairdresser and we dated. Fred has a lot of gay friends. Fred moved to New York to work on Broadway, and he did; as a hair and make-up man he worked on "Cats" (very tiny perm rods), "Amadeus," and "Doonesbury: the Musical," to name a few. In New York, however, our relationship was different. Wisely, we were just roommates. Fred, however, should have been having no problem in this bar. It took several drinks to loosen him up.
Our new friend and benefactor (he was now buying) was absolutely delighted with the two of us. He pardoned himself at one point to go to the men's room. I had to check with Fred who was going from "I'm not all that happy here" to "Well, okay, if you're having a good time" when the bartender, using the same microphone he'd used to announce the last happy hour call, called out, "Phone call for Doctor Hertz! Paging Doctor Dick Hertz!" and our benefactor, just coming around the corner bleated, "That's meeee!"
To this day I only know this man as Dr. Dick Hertz. If he mentioned his name, I did not retain it.
Dr. Hertz convinced us to go to another bar in the Village and we all (as he had some other friends) piled into a taxi. The next thing I remember, I was on a dance floor dancing with someone I did not know. There were all men around me, mostly bald, bearded, pierced, black leather-clad. Notably, one of them was wearing some sort of studded black leather halter and black leather shorts, and probably a black leather, studded dog collar. This was a new experience for me, and I was grateful for it. However, it was a "school night." Our intention had been to see a movie and perhaps consume a beverage or two.
After the song, I located the bar and found Fred sitting there looking shell-shocked. "Where are we?" I yelled over the music. "We're in the Village," he told me, "at a bar called The Monster." "How did we get here?" "I don't know," he admitted, "but I remember something about a taxi ride and someone named Dr. Dick Hertz."
Right on cue, the good doctor came up to us shouting, "That's meee!" We thanked him and made our way out. Nothing looked familiar. We spent the next couple of hours wandering around the Village, trying to find a subway and our way home. At that hour, the subways were coming right seldom and we had to take three to get back home. After the subways we had to negotiate the eight blocks from Lexington and 86th Street (where Fred claimed to see prostitutes all the time and I never knew what he was talking about) back to our apartment.
I look back and shudder at the escapades I had in New York and am amazed that nothing ever happened to me. I am thankful, though, that I don't have stories to tell about bondage clubs or being mugged or other more lurid fare. I'll leave those tales to others. A couple of decades down the line when I'm appalling my great-niece and -nephews with stories, the contrast between my grey head and wrinkles and the mild excitement of these stories will be enough to make them goggle. Well, at least they will goggle the first few hundred times.

Best Wishes in the New Year

Been thinkin' about anger today. I've been blowing up over little things, but it's the big things that you have no control over that are the most painful - and they just fester away until someone does something stupid and Kaboom! So what am I so angry about?

Well, I suppose I'm still mad at my sister for dying. Of course, that means that I need to feel guilty about being mad at her for something she had no control over. She gave those cancer treatments her best shot. So I will instead have to be mad at her for all the little things she did to me over the years, although I doubted she could have helped herself there either. She could have completely ignored me all her life. She was nine years older and by default an only child.

Instead, she played with me. She played "camping" with me ... by setting a fire under my crib. She played "Ed Sullivan Show" by using me as one of those large balls acrobats spun and tossed with their feet. She played poker with me ... before I was able to read, so I had to run into the kitchen to ask my mother what my hand was. Yes, all the games seemed to have me on the losing side, but she was actually playing with me. Rare were the times that she tried to keep me out of her hair by, say, tying me to a rocking chair with my own summer camp lanyard braiding. I was very, very lucky.

My sister had a lot of power over me that I was unable to combat. If I refused to play along with one of her schemes and ran and locked myself in my room, she would stand outside and alternate between threatening me and acting pitiful ("Mom and Dad like you better ...") until I gave in.

Decades into our relationship, we met at our parents' house and I made some remark to the effect, "You're not as tall as I remember." She was always sensitive about her height, which she claimed to be no more than five foot twelve inches. "That's funny," she retorted immediately, "You're every bit as short as I remember."

I worried about our relationship when our mother (I almost wrote "my mother," and usually caught hell for that when I said it in front of her, but we were figuratively raised by different mothers) was gone. We had both gone down to help our parents make their final move and were clearing out the attic, finding boxes that hadn't been opened since the previous move. My sister found something she wanted for herself. I was living in an shared apartment, so I wasn't even thinking of keeping anything I ran across. Mother was always after us to to find things we wanted and tag them for the future. She put my name in an antique clock that I expressed an interest in. It would stay with her and our Father as long as they lived, but we could claim it afterwards if it had our name in or on it. So my sister asked me if she could have this item. I have absolutely no recollection of what it was, but she claimed it would mean a lot to her. I had no interest in it. "You can have the next thing," she said, seemingly sweetening the pot. I have no interest in it. She could have it. Minutes later she found an extremely ugly hand-painted (by some unknown relative, no doubt) plate. "You can have this!" she said. "I don't think so," I retorted. "I get to choose what it is and it's not that ugly thing!"

After that, I really worried about what would happen when it came to divvying up the junk my, I mean, our mother collected over the years. As usual, and as Mother always said, I was worrying about the wrong thing. Now all I have to worry about is whether my nieces will want any of that junk! But at the time I worried that it would be just one incident like that after another. There would be bartering going on of byzantine convolutions. We'd probably have to get someone to come in and value every last teacup.

Later, in the year before she was diagnosed with cancer, we were playing cards at her house during the Christmas holiday. I hardly ever play cards anymore, mostly because no one I know plays. She was losing. I had won about three games in a row and I could see the consternation growing on her face. I was quite giddy. I never win games when I play them with her. In fact, I thought for years that I was rubbish at games because she always beat me. I reluctantly joined into a Monopoly game when I was in college because I was so bad at playing, but I walked all over those people. They started glaring at me (I'd gotten the utility monopoly) as they paid out, grumbling, "You sure you don't play well?"

So there I was, winning! This was my time to get up and do the end-zone dance. I didn't though. First of all, I had to check her face to make sure she wasn't letting me win, just to pounce later. Instead, she looked so unhappy that I kept playing so that I could intentionally lose (without being detected, which was a big worry) and she would cheer up. Not being quite as competitive as she was, winning wasn't such a big deal. (When you lose all the time you don't develop a competitive spirit. In fact, you can become quite opposed to competition and stressed out by it.) I didn't need to display my hubris by crowing over her losses. I held them tightly and secretly to my chest and hugged them, feeling I was an adult at last (at what, age forty?) having finally beaten a life-long adversary.

Within a year she was having radiation treatments for cervical cancer and then I wondered about my winning streak. She had been hemorrhaging so badly that she was passing out when she finally called the doctor. She may have been ill for ages and not known it. I may not have been so clever after all.

Her legacy in me is that streak of anti-competitiveness, which doesn't necessarily translate into teamwork, but I will try to undermine competition with the suggestion of all-working-together. In graduate school I was horrified when someone I very much liked in the first week, suddenly went all competitive on me when the opportunity arose. We didn't get along again until the end, and now he's one of the few friends I have left from that phase of my life. He was called Pete, and I referred to him as "ComPete" in disgust. After we noticed that people were hoarding books from the library on quarter-loan, I suggested we pick ones we would all need, check them out for the quarter, and keep them in our graduate-assistants' office (a pokey hole on the modern language floor). I even added one of my personal books to the collection.

During the written exams, they put all the foreign languages in one room and left us otherwise unproctored. They figured the presence of other departments would keep us honest. Fortunately, the competition broke down enough so that we were able to help each other when we were at a loss for a word. The only one who complained was the one German Masters Candidate, but we said we'd do our best to help her if she needed it. If someone got lost, everyone stopped what they were doing until a solution was found.

I never got my master's degree, but I did get farther in my education than my sister. It came to my attention when I was in graduate school that as soon as she moved out of the house, my grades in school got better. I'm not sure what was affecting them, the continual assertion that I was stupid (or uncoordinated, or knock-kneed), or taking up my time playing with me. But she did play with me. I have always looked for friends who were like her, not in the superior way she had, but in having lots of ideas of things to get into. I don't have many such ideas, moi.

My sister made several attempts at college, but never managed to pass Freshman English, which only became more difficult each time. Mother said she got her Mrs. degree, which is what counted. I think after that Mom decided her job was over and she could relax. My sister's marriage lasted until her premature death, which is more than many can say, and she raised two children who have their own families. I can give her no better accolade than she would have used herself: Not Half Bad!

Oh, here's another

I hope this one can be read. This is the transcription of an actual event. I was appearing the "The Mousetrap" with a group of experienced repertory people. My character was stuck in a scene where I had nothing to do or say for what seemed like twenty minutes. At that point I had a one-word line to justify my presence on stage. I spent most of that time going over that one word to make sure I didn't screw it up, which I have been known to do, only to hear that one word delivered by someone else (who was supposed to say something along the line of "But that's crazy!"). What to do?! What to do?!
Years later one of the other performers was doing a crossword puzzle and came across a clue for a six-letter word for "nonsense" that had a "p" and an "f" in it. Up until then, she thought I'd made the word up.
Hey, I'm not that good!

Cartoon

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The Eyes of Yoko Are Upon Us

I had not been in New York very long. I had already been ejected from two living spaces (or ejected from one and on the way out from another) in less than two weeks. It was lunacy to have come up here. Perhaps I was under the impression that being born in Poughkeepsie made me a native of some kind; something other than an Upstate Hick. Our family had lived all up and down the eastern U.S. and the last place we had settled was South Carolina. I had left a small town where I knew everyone’s face (names will always escape me), and taken the train to Manhattan.

A friend was waiting for me there, and I spent some time in her hotel for Middle Class Women. Hmmm. They had a funny idea of what constituted “middle class.” I was appalled by the conditions and the rent. Renee told me I could only stay so long and then I would have to find another place. I had no idea how to go about it. Renee even had to tell me how to use public transportation.

“Take these quarters and put them in your glove,” she said. It was February and quite cold. The New Yorker in me rejoiced at the “briskness” of the air. The South Carolinian was freezing. “Put them in the change slot and ask the driver for a transfer.” Renee was talking to me as if I were a kindergartner. “He will tear off a transfer and hand it to you. Keep that with you to give to the driver of the next bus.” Looking back at this now, I am amazed by how naïve I was. Naïve enough to not know how to use a bus. Naïve enough to think I could just take the train to New York City and find a place to stay and work. Naïve enough to try to go to auditions. You would have thought I was eighteen. In fact, I was twenty-eight. I was a late bloomer.

I moved into the YWCA on Lexington Avenue, which I was later convinced to be run by Nazis. I only had so much money on me and the manager wanted me to cough it all up to hold the room for another two weeks. The room was tiny and infested with roaches. They weren’t the giant, glossy palmetto bugs of coastal South Carolina, but tiny German cockroaches that ignored you because they knew they would be around long after humankind died out. They crawled all over the tiny sink in the room.

I have a problem making decisions. Once the decision is made, I can follow it through, but I will walk up and down the street until I am utterly exhausted before I will be able to choose a place to eat. I was there with limited money. I had $8,000 in the bank, had budgeted $2,000 to set myself up in New York in 1982, but was only carrying a few hundred. There was no use telling the manager of the Y that if I gave her the money she wanted, I would have nothing to eat on for the remaining two weeks. That was my lookout. I told her anyway. There were plenty of women clamoring to pay $20 a day to stay in that miserable cockroach spa, she told me. Pay up ahead or leave.

I opted to leave … at the end of the week. Then I went searching for something to eat. Up and down Lexington Avenue I went, marveling at the Citicorp building, looking like a modern mucilage bottle. I looked in the face of everyone in the street because knowing each and every one of them was a stranger was liberating. I had moved from a place where all faces were familiar. It never kept me from doing stupid things, but it was stultifying. All new faces were so refreshing! They were inspiration! Well, they were at first. Then I got hungry. Up and down I walked, looking for something affordable and reasonably nutritious. This let out all cozily standardized fast food outlets. I could get a Whopper for ninety-nine cents, but I’d also get heartburn.

If I tell you that in the end I bought a container of unsalted freshly-ground peanut butter at a health food store and some Stoned Wheat Thins, you would not appreciate the chasm of indecision I inhabited for some hours. Up and down, across and around, “No, not there, or there, or there, but what about, no – no – no.” Back and through, pacing, pacing, then plodding, and then staggering. Up, down, back, plod, stagger, stagger. It reminded me of all the dates I spent with men waiting for me to make up my mind about where we should have dinner. One of them drove around a traffic circle waiting for me to decide. “I’m going to drive around this traffic circle until you decide,” he said. Then he got mad at me when that ploy didn’t help me come to a conclusion. It did not and still really does not matter to me where I eat. If he’s paying for it, he should eat where he would find something he’d enjoy. Round and round and round … and in the end the place I chose gave me food poisoning. Back and forth, counting my cash in my head. What makes the most sense? Down and up, and you get the point, but I’m still not making up my mind. I wondered if I would starve to death first.

And in the end, I should have gotten the salted.

New York City had only started on me. I walked back to the Y one evening, and had begun another unpleasant conversation with the Kommandant when another woman threw herself through the door breathlessly. “I’ve been mugged!” she cried. “When? Where?” we asked her. “Just now, just down the street!” She had been following me when a man stepped out from the shadows and demanded her purse. I had not heard anything. I had not been mugged. I decided not to report this to my parents. I did, however, call my friend Temple in Cambridge, Massachusetts and tell him.

Temple had been very encouraging. He had accidentally ended up at Harvard Law School when a film director apprenticeship had gone sour on him. He had taken some test to get into this program. He had wanted to practice for it, but his parents refused to pay for that. They would, however, pay for him to take the LSATs. He considered that the LSATs would be good practice for the film director test. He returned to Kentucky complaining that people in Hollywood never answered their phones. “They just sit in the Jacuzzi and drink martinis,” he said bitterly. His parents, he said, would pay for him to go to law school. “I think Harvard,” he said. “All the great theatre people have moved from Yale to Harvard. I can keep up with theatre there.” “What makes you think you’ll get into Harvard Law School?” I scoffed. “Oh, when I took the LSATs, I checked the boxes for Harvard and Yale and some others to have the scores sent to,” he said blithely. I still didn’t believe he would go to Harvard. “Ask me what my percentile ranking was on the LSATs,” he continued in the same blasé voice. “What was your percentile ranking?” I sneered. “Are you sitting down?” he asked. Yes, I was sitting down, silly ass. “Ninety-eight point six,” he enunciated. I blanched. “Sounds normal to me,” I sniffed finally.

Okay, it may have been another number, but it was in the high nineties. I’m not very good with numbers. Case in point: Just before I left for New York, I received a letter from Temple. There was a check in it. It was yellow, I remember that much. I was touched almost to tears. I read the letter through the moisture in my eyes. He knew that New York would be expensive and he’d enclosed a little something to help. I glanced at the check, verklempt. I looked at it again. Now, Temple and I have a dispute going on this. He claims it was only for four hundred million dollars. I say it was for six hundred million. Whichever it was, it made me laugh. I showed it to my mother. She shook her head … and then she laughed.

As New York worked its alienation magic on me, I grew closer to despair. I was eating a meal every day that I could barely swallow. I needed milk badly. I needed a real place to stay and a job. I needed a plan.

Instead, I wandered around the area aimlessly. I wandered into Bloomingdale’s. All around me people, mostly women, bustled around. It was worse than the sidewalks outside. Inside Bloomingdale’s you had to dodge the perfume testers as well. I had no idea where I was going. I was stuck in the cosmetic section and I had no interest in cosmetics. Overly made-up women and supercilious men waylaid customers as they tried to pass, hawking expensive and pointless (in my eyes) wares. I had no words for my feelings. Empty? Alone? Ummmmm, nope, no words, no thesaurus. Suddenly I noticed that there was no longer anyone in the aisle where I was. I looked around a bit. There was not a soul in any part of the cosmetic area. What had happened?

Slowly I turned around. Coming up behind me was an enormous man, thick and centered like a wrestler. I almost did not notice the tiny woman slightly ahead of him and to the right. I stared. Her form finally took shape and separated her from the bulk of her companion. I looked straight into the sunglass-clad eyes of John Lennon’s widow of only a little more than a year. Behind Yoko’s shades, I saw the feelings for which I had no words reflected in the dark of her eyes. I turned and fled.

That night (well, maybe it was; that would make this story much tidier), I had arranged with Temple to move into his dormitory room at Harvard. I took the train the next morning.

And thereby hangs another tale.

I Have a Sock Full of Cash ... On My Arm Pt. 2

I made myself a nest and prepared to continue reading for three hours. Fortunately, I had more than one book. The magazine stand seemed to carry commuter comestibles, such as coffee and donuts. It was actually nice and quiet. There was none of the bustle and noise of Penn Station. Okay, it was creepy, but I became absorbed in my reading and time, in consideration of the surroundings, crept by.

When he first came in, I had noticed him. You can’t help but notice when one person is added to a building with only two others in it. This likewise made him aware of me. He was dressed in a grey sweatshirt and pants, with a stocking cap of navy blue to keep off the Boston February chill. He bought a coffee and donut from the magazine stand and chatted with the proprietor. Casting about for a place to sit and enjoy his snack, he picked my bench. I observed his approach from the corner of my eye, trying to look totally involved in my paperback. I wished vainly that he would find somewhere else, but he stopped very close and asked, oh so predictably, “Is this seat taken?”

My memory is not good enough to reproduce the entire conversation. There was a time when I could claim to quote it verbatim, but I am long past that, fortunately for you, my gentle reader. The gist of it was that he was in the Navy and out for his run. He had not behaved well when he was younger, hadn’t paid attention in school, but now he was pulling himself together and planning to go to college on the G.I. Bill. He was handsome and earnest. And he owed it all to Jesus.

I had thought to have escaped that when I left South Carolina. I politely expressed my admiration for his resolve. He thought perhaps that his example might provide inspiration for me. Well, now, that’s curious. I realize that I bumbled my graduate work, and am not the best of students. I was and still am lazy intellectually. Okay, and physically. School was only a lark for me and here was someone who wanted to better himself and was putting himself through the rigors of the military in order to get the wherewithal to go to college. My background, while middle-class, was privileged, probably, compared to his. I was embarrassed. It was with a certain amount of reluctance that I admitted to having been to college and two years of graduate school. I was between jobs at the moment and just traveling to visit friends. I became conscious of the money in the sock on my arm and in my bank account. In our family, talking about money was worse than talking about sex. It was an intensely private thing. Discussing your money was boasting. Out here in the metropolis, it might be dangerous. That’s why I had my money in a sock up my arm.

Somehow I had to convince this young man that I was fine, without letting him know I was sitting on a pile of cash (although there was just a few hundred up my arm, I could call my broker at any time and have him wire me more) and was just waiting to be picked up by a friend without giving away how long I was going to have to wait. Just because he (literally) had Navy written all over him didn’t mean he couldn’t lurk somewhere and bop me on the bean to get whatever it was he wanted. Anyone could get a buzz cut and buy a sweatsuit with “Navy” on it. If he really was in the Navy, maybe he had been on ship for months and wanted ... wanted – aaaaagh! It didn’t bear thinking about!

I was not convincing. Apparently. He couldn’t believe that a.) someone with a college degree would be out of work and surrounded by bags sitting in a railway station; b.) that if I had any money I would be just sitting there; and c.) that an intelligent person would come up with such lame assurances as “I’m okay, I have some crackers and peanut butter with me.” He did eventually get up and leave. I watched him throw away his cup and papers (maybe even the Boston Strangler was tidy – whoa! The Boston Strangler?!) and walk out. I relaxed too soon. He came purposefully back, pulled a dollar out of his pocket and tried to give it to me. He told me I could buy a donut with it. He was so kind and I was such a coward. The realization hit that he actually thought I was homeless. I made a mental note to wash my hair first thing. I refused the dollar as politely as I could. I was not homeless. Were I to give up on New York, I could return to a house on Hilton Head Island, find another job there, or just sponge off my parents.

He finally gave in and left. I was rescued a bit earlier than expected by Temple and Tommy. I told them my story, still a bit shaken, but trying to make it funny. I stayed a bit with Temple at the law school. By the time I was ready to go back to New York, I had a place to stay. In very little time I was working and going to auditions. I didn't have a job all the time, I shared an illegal sublet with Fred who was also in and out of work. In the back of my mind, though, there was the knowledge that I would be able to successfully panhandle. Well, people might give me money, but apparently I had trouble accepting it.

I Have a Sock Full of Cash ... On My Arm Pt. 1

I had been through Pennsylvania Station before when I first arrived in New York. It was bustling and full of places to sit. I had purchased a ticket to Boston to stay with my friend, Temple, when New York finally proved too unwieldy for the likes of me. Although I was leaving, I still planned to go back. A plan, that’s what I needed. My current plan was to stay with Temple at his graduate student dormitory at Harvard University. They had a spare room on his floor for the occasional visitor. I could stay there for a couple of days, but then another visitor was coming and I would have to move out … and into his room.

I had slept in Temple’s room many times before, notably when he won me for a week in the famous “Win A Marf” contest. He had submitted several pages of activities (most of which involved massages) and reasons why he would want me to visit, three letters of recommendation, and an 8x10 inch glossy. At that time he had been fired from Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, probably just by being himself. He talked his way back into his apprenticeship long enough to tell off Jon Jory and quit. One of the reasons I should visit had been that as he had been fired, he had lots of spare time on his hands with which to entertain me. Being the sympathetic sort that I am, I had a glass mug engraved with the motto: “I’ve Been Sacked by ATL.” So, I was slightly disappointed to learn that he had been rehired and then quit. Would this lessen the impact of my gift? And “I Quit ATL” would have saved me some money, if I’d known.

All this is just to show that Temple and I were as close as two non-sexually intimate people could be. I had always been torn about Temple. I would easily slip from adoring him to fearing him, a trait I can now put down to immaturity – mine, too. It’s hard to describe the ease with which Temple lept into emotions. I move very slowly from one feeling to another. Temple could be cracking jokes one minute and in someone’s face and threatening them in another. He never threatened me, but his reactions to another driver cutting him off in a parking lot (jumping out of the car and yelling and waving his fists), scared the bejesus out of me. He’d leap back into the car afterwards, start to back up, and then look over at my horrorstruck face and say, “What?” as if he’d all ready forgotten the whole incident.

Temple was a refuge for me at this time. I’d been spooked out by the empty void in the glasses of Yoko Ono and ran to his side. Okay, I called him and he invited me to stay. He had classes all day, though, and wouldn’t be able to pick me up until after 7 pm. In his first year at Harvard Law School, he did not have a car, so he had to rely on his friend, Tommy McKinley, to drive him to the station. Had I been confident in my public transportation, I could have taken the T on my own. Today I would do that. Back then I would wait mouselike in some hole waiting to be picked up.

I had to be out of my room at the YWCA on Lexington Avenue by a certain time, and although there were plenty of trains going to Boston all day, I thought I would wait at Penn Station until the departure of the one that would drop me off in Boston closest to my pick-up time. There was plenty going on in the station: places to eat, to buy magazines and books, people watching to do. I had bought a book and planted myself on a chair in the waiting area with my luggage around me. My money, rather less than the $500 I’d started out with, real life being an expensive arrangement, was in a kneesock that I kept up my sleeve on my forearm. I had priced money-belts and other security devices before venturing to New York (especially on a train where one slept in a chair – I’d read Emil und die Detective!), but had shown myself to be the apple that didn’t fall far from the tight-wad tree. Instead, I took a favorite tan kneesock that had developed holes, and converted it into an armband that could hold money or my lightweight, nylon wallet. I thought myself very clever. It is a family tradition to believe that anyone could pay for something, but the Smart Person does it himself. Our house was full of things my dad had built or repaired in the most Byzantine method imaginable, such as a ceiling storage area in the garage he [operant word:] tried to chin himself on for the benefit of some prospective home buyers as well as rendering the untrained outsider unable to turn on our television or start his car. This has led me to pointless and time-consuming activities such as making my own coconut milk, graham crackers, puff pastry, etc.

I felt secure in my decision and the plan at hand: read until lunchtime, eat, and read some more until my chosen train departure. Temple and I would have dinner (at his expense, of course, because that’s what he was like: generous to a fault with his parents’ money) after I arrived. I had some of the salt-free, barely-edible, formerly fresh-ground peanut butter and crackers if I got hungry in the meantime. It was all under control.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take New York into account. While Amtrak was not currently killing passengers and gangs of thugs were not roving train stations, I still managed to attract the disruptive element. I was in my chair, reading happily, when a figure stopped in front of me. I looked up to see a seemingly nice little old man standing before me. “Your train!” he said. They hadn’t called my train. My train wasn’t for three hours yet. They had just called a Boston train, but not mine. I tried to deflect him. “No, it’s not –,” I started. “You take this train,” he commanded. He wasn’t official, just an thin, old man, dressed nicely with suit, tie, and a hat. Thinking he might know something I didn’t (although I had no idea how he would know I was on my way to Boston), I got up and took the train. I took one last look to see if he’d wanted my seat, but it was still empty and there were plenty more around.

I can wait just as easily at the Boston station as here, I thought. Boston’s another big city, their station is probably comparable. Ahem. That was before the renovation of South Station. When I arrived that day at South Station, I found a derelict station with one magazine stand and some dingy and vacated retail spaces. The seating was just wooden benches that had no one else on them. Not even bums bothered with South Station. I found a payphone and called Tommy to leave the message that I had arrived early. Tommy, whom I had not met, offered to come and get me, but I decided to take my chances with an “empty” building so that Tommy would not feel obliged to entertain me. It should be an indication of my continued naivety that I preferred a decrepit public space to the comforts of an actual apartment with a Harvard student in it.

Preston et le Tour de Manhattan

My late friend Pres visited me in New York when I was on the Upper East Side. He wanted to go on a walking tour of the island, so we set off toward Midtown one morning. Now, Pres had already come from where he was staying on the Upper West Side, so he had already traversed Central Park. Having no proper job (and I probably didn’t either at the time), he had very little money so we lunched on day-old bagels. We visited Leonard Bernstein’s office (where I saw my first Gold Record, as well as my second and a host of others), and walked and talked all the way down to the Village. We walked along Christopher Street and stopped in at a shop called “The Leatherman.” I’m not a leather person myself and I didn’t recall ever seeing Pres in anything not preppy. Pres seemed to be getting quieter. Finally he relaxed a bit. “I just figured out what’s wrong,” he told me. “I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t being cruised. It’s because I’m with you.” Ah, the other men weren’t checking him out and that had been worrying him. We weren’t holding hands or anything. My presence was enough to render him off-limits. I suppose that also explains why he went into the leather shop, to make himself a bit more visible. Then again, a man interested in black leather is not automatically gay.
We continued down to the Battery where Pres considered taking the Staten Island Ferry to look at Miss Liberty, because he was too cheap to actually ride on the one to Liberty Island.
Instead, we started home. We were probably heading straight up First Avenue to go to my apartment, because we made desultory plans to take a bus if it just happened to come by when we were near a stop. That never happened. We walked all the way back. The sun was starting to go down. This may not seem as much of an adventure to you, but look at a map of Manhattan and figure out how far we went. We were gone from ten in the morning until dusk with nothing to eat but lightly stale bagels.
Pres dropped me off at my apartment and then said he would walk back through Central Park to the West Side. “But it’s getting dark!” And I insisted he take a bus. I knew I was worn out. That was probably the beginning of my varicose veins. And Central Park is dangerous in the dark. He insisted he’d be fine. And it took another decade and AIDS to finally get Pres.
Pres had been a good friend. I had met him the summer he debated telling his parents he was gay. (He told me later his dad responded to the news with, "You know, I sort of suspected something, but I didn't want to say anything.") His parents had a place on Hilton Head and Pres had come up from Florida to stay with them a while. We met at an island disco, since that was all the rage at the time. He asked me if I thought he should tell his parents and I'm always for telling the truth. I had met his parents at that point (and worried that they were giving me the eye) and thought they were nice enough folk and could handle it.
He called me one day to tell me the cat was now officially out of the bag. Then he invited me over to their place for cocktails and dinner. It was my turn to feel awkward. I felt as if I had been party to some sort of deceit in being a cover for Pres's homosexuality. No, no, no, he told me, they liked me and would want to see me again. So I went.
Pres introduced me to many of my firsts: first time on a tandem bicycle, first time the handlebars of a bicycle, first time on some sort of cycle holding a glass with bourbon on the rocks and worrying that we would fall, the glass would break, and a large shard would go straight into my heart, first time in a Rolls Royce, first time in a car that may or may not have been Taken Without Consent (Pres was a doorman at the time at a posh downtown Boston hotel).
He told me that he was HIV positive the day he came to visit me after my accident. He said that if he developed AIDS he wanted to go back to Florida where it was warm. As it turned out, his mother cared for him and his partner until they died ... in Maine.

Oh, what a silly bunt.

I have a friend, a dear, dear friend, who has a great story. Even though I'd dearly love to be, I can’t be the one to tell it. She's actually working it up for probable publication. My husband wondered if her version and mine would match and I said they would have to be pretty close because she doesn’t actually remember the incident and has to rely on my memory of it anyway. She can flesh it out, though. I will say that it involves a reasonably formal dinner party of mostly Harvard Law School Students, my friend and her Mormon boyfriend, using the Lord’s name in vain, and a crude, colloquial term for a particular area of a human female’s anatomy. And it wasn’t really funny at the time.

The Man Who Came to Dinner

I met many people at Harvard Law School during my Boston hiatus. One of them was a tall, lean, and muscular Austrian (accent on the lean) named Heinrich Willke. After graduating from Harvard, Heinrich was unwilling to go into the workaday world, so he started another advanced law degree at NYU. This put him in the part of town with the best falafel shop in the world. For 75 cents (in 1980s money) you got a great sandwich. Heinrich looked me up in New York and introduced me to The Best Falafel Sandwich. At that time a ride on the subway was 75 cents and then went up to 90. (Later I was worried that the Falafel sandwich price would go up with it, but it didn’t. )To repay Heinrich for treating me to The Best Falafel Sandwich (quite a stretch for him being a student and always short of cash), I invited him to dinner on a particular date about a week in the future.
Living in New York is exhausting. I used to say that one could not manage more than three errands in one day. Bit by bit I was accumulating all the things needed for dinner with Heinrich. I dragged home to the studio apartment one evening after work the chicken, which was going to be the centerpiece of the dinner. Sodas would be too heavy to carry along with the other groceries and I was leaving them for the last night. It was just too much to walk mixers back from 86th Street and Lexington with the groceries.
Fred was home for a change. He was having one of his simple dinners of popcorn and Coke. I had made the pie for dessert and was still running elaborate plans for the chicken through my head as I relaxed.
The buzzer went off.
Now, those of you who don’t live in New York City probably don’t realize that people do not just drop in on each other. Fred and I looked at each other. Then I got up and pressed the intercom. “Who is it?” I asked, tremulously. “Iph eye ncck.” Fred looked up at me. “Who is it?” “It sounds like … like Heinrich!” I whimpered. The intercoms are notorious for garbling just about anyone’s words, but I’d caught enough of it. “I thought he was coming tomorrow.” “Yeeeessss!” Fred didn’t bother to get up, but he held his next mouthful of popcorn poised in his hand.
This is one of those slo-mo-moments where time drags out, like that Einstein guy said. I hope it didn’t seem like the eternity it was to me to Heinrich. I buzzed him in.
“What are you going to do?” Fred asked.
“Have dinner,” I said.
Fred put his popcorn up and rushed around trying to find things that would go together (all we had for beverages was Fred’s open bottle of Coke, vodka, and a bottle of Château Neuf du Pape, which probably didn’t go with chicken, but would have to do) while I just fired up the oven and threw the chicken in a pan.
Heinrich came in and we served him lukewarm lashings of vodka and Coke, red wine, and plain baked chicken topped off with some sort of fruit pie probably.
To this day, as far as I know, Heinrich has no idea that he was not, in fact, a fashionable hour late, but 23 hours early. He may think that I am a terrible cook and an indifferent or disorganized hostess and he is free to think that rather than think he committed any sort of social gaff.